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SNEC Newsletter
2023-02-10
SNEC President’s Message
2023 SNEC / NED Meeting Content
Thank you to all the folks who made the AFS SNEC/NED meeting in
Boston possible! Three Cheers to the Planning Committee, Student
Volunteers, Moderators, AV Crew, AFS HQ Staff, Poster and Oral
Presenters, and Attendees. More pictures and experiences from the
conference will be published in the Spring newsletter.

Thanks also to Rachel
Pomerleau who designed the logo for this meeting. Rachel is a
graduate student at Acadia University studying trace element
contaminants in coastal recreational fishes in Atlantic Canada. She’s
also an artist!


2022 AFS Annual Meeting Travel Award Recipients
Thanks to the generosity of our members, SNEC supported two students
in their travels to Spokane, Washington for the AFS annual meeting last
fall.
Asha Ajmani is a PhD student at UMass Amherst and a Fellow at the
Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

Thank you for the opportunity to attend AFS 2022. I was proud to
attend a conference that focused so much on the value of Indigenous
Knowledge, Indigenous science, and Indigenous partnerships. It is hard
to work in a field where Tribal engagement is relatively new, and it is
personally frustrating and isolating to be one of the few people at my
university engaging in this work; my goals and the goals of the Tribal
community don’t often align with the standard research milestones
guiding academia. It was welcoming and rewarding to participate in a
conference where we were invited to be a part of culture and science
that highlights the Indigenous ways of life, including deep connections
to culture and nature. For the first time in a long time, I felt
connected to a community that appreciates this, and I was able to
network and make connections with others working with Indigenous
communities. One idea that really stood out to me was the concept of
Indigenous methodologies and how fish are “interrogated” throughout
their whole life. From Sammy Matsaw Jr., I learned that the
Wolf-Teachings promote keeping our hands off the fish. Using
light-handed methods, or methods that provide more information with less
handling of the fish, fits in with these teachings and helps advance
more quickly towards a subsistence goal. These goals are higher than the
recovery goals set by state or federal management agencies. I would like
to incorporate this light-handed methodology more intentionally into my
work, as it aligns with the concepts taught to me by my Tribal partners
and with my own personal beliefs.
You can read more about Asha, her research, and her experience in
Spokane here.
Katrina Zarrella Smith is a PhD Candidate in the Jordaan Fisheries
and Aquatic Ecology lab at UMass Amherst.

AFS Spokane was an amazing opportunity for me to debut my
dissertation research to an important audience. I view professional
conferences, specifically AFS, as an essential development tool in the
research process from start to finish, and not just a time to
communicate final results. The “Bringing new perspectives to marine and
estuarine fisheries” symposium, where I gave my oral presentation,
provided an excellent platform to share plans for my research,
interesting preliminary results, and work on developing my scientific
communication style. Through my talk and time at AFS, I was able to make
valuable connections with professionals and peers ─ connections that
will ultimately enhance my research products and broaden my career
avenues. This award also enabled me to take advantage of the Continuing
Education courses which taught me skills that I am now applying in my
modeling work. I am also a member of the Equal Opportunities Section and
AFS was a great time for us all to come together, meet folks with
similar experiences, and move forward with new energy to take on the
challenges of bringing diversity, equity, and inclusion principles to
our profession. Thank you all for this award and for supporting me as I
work to achieve my goals.
You can read more about Katrina, her research, and her experience in
Spokane here.
Center for Coastal Studies Researching Shellfish Abundance in East
Harbor on Cape Cod
The Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) Marine Fisheries Research
program has been working closely with scientists and students from the
National Park Service Cape Cod National Seashore and Antioch University
to study horseshoe crab and shellfish populations in East Harbor, also
known as Pilgrim Lake, a coastal lagoon in Truro and Provincetown on the
outer Cape. The construction of the railroad in the 1800s isolated East
Harbor from Cape Cod Bay, now connected to the Bay only by a culvert
under Route 6 and Shore Road that for years functioned only as an
overflow to prevent rainwater from overfilling the lagoon and flooding
the highway. An oxygen depletion and fish kill in September 2001
prompted the Town of Truro and Cape Cod National Seashore to investigate
options for restoring the East Harbor system, and in the following year,
the Seashore began a tidal
restoration project, allowing the tide to run in and out of the
culvert. The lagoon quickly turned from brackish to estuarine/saltwater
conditions and water quality improved. Fish and shellfish returned to
the system relatively quickly, but in the years following the
restoration, their numbers fluctuated from year to year.
The CCS
Toyota Tacoma often served as a mobile plankton laboratory this summer.
A pump sampler designed and built by Marine Fisheries Research Director
Owen Nichols operated off the truck’s battery, filtering plankton from
hundreds of gallons of water. Here, Nichols deploys the pump sampler as
Americorps Cape Cod service members look on.
This summer, CCS Marine Fisheries Research director Owen Nichols
collected zooplankton samples as part of a study of shellfish abundance
and distribution in the East Harbor system. Nichols will be analyzing
these samples this winter, comparing the numbers of bivalve (two-shelled
molluscs like clams and mussels) and crab larvae in samples collected on
incoming and outgoing tides in order to understand factors driving
changes in the abundance of shellfish and their predators (such as the
invasive green crab). While the CCS Marine Fisheries Research program
often works offshore with the Cape’s commercial fishing community, we
frequently respond to community concerns by looking inshore at the vital
habitats of our bays, marshes, and coastal lagoons.
Learn More About Our Region
UConn Today ran a feature story about research at the
intersection of river herring restoration and climate change in
Connecticut. You can read more about that collaborative effort between
fisheries biologists and hydrologists here.
The State of the Harbor Conference in Wellfleet, MA was
cosponsored by the Friends of Herring
River, Mass Audubon, The Center for Coastal Studies,
The Wellfleet
Conservation Trust, and the Town of Wellfleet. It included
presentations about using eDNA to track winter flounder, herring
restoration, and nutrient flows in the harbor. Check out a recording of
the conference here
The team behind a multi-year human dimensions research project
studying attitudes to rebounding seal and shark populations among
different demographic groups on Cape Cod has been busy publishing the
results of their research. Check out more about the project here.
Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries biologist John
Sheppard put together a YouTube
video to go along with a recent publication he co-authored, entitled
Phenological
Variation in Spring Migration Timing of Adult Alewife in Coastal
Massachusetts
Recently Published Research
PAPER TITLE
CITATION
Abstract Read the full
paper..
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